Demand for data center switching equipment continues expanding, now also driven by growth at edge locations, “as more companies continue to position their data center networks closer to end users, providing them with higher bandwidth and lower-latency performance,” Devan Adams, principal analyst at Omdia, said.
According to Omdia’s Data Center Network Equipment Market Tracker, data center switch port deployments at edge locations are expected to grow at a five-year compound average growth rate (CAGR) of 10 percent from 2019-2024.
What’s driving data center switch port growth at the edge:
- IoT
- 5G
- Cloud gaming
- Augmented reality
- Virtual reality
- 3D and 4K video streaming
Enterprises Reign Supreme at the Data Center Edge
Omdia forecasts edge data centers (defined as locations with a maximum 20 millisecond round trip time to the end user device, machine, or application) to account for 30 percent of all data center Ethernet ports shipped in 2024, up from 27 percent in 2019. Enterprises are the largest data center switch deployers at the edge, representing 75 percent of all edge ports shipped in 2019.
Data center switch port deployments at edge locations
Service providers (cloud and telcos) are expected to dominate non-edge locations by 2024, owning 66 percent of all non-edge located ports in that timeframe, up from 46 percent in 2019.
Data center switch port deployments at non-edge locations
